Quick reads: on overnight success and patience

I decided to start with quick read series of stories, some observations and reflections on life, work cycle, progress, people, human nature, social web paradigm, etc.

Few weeks ago I bought a flower, a hyacinth from the local flower shop (for some reason I kept writing on Instagram – tulip, it’s not tulip it’s hyacinth). It was baby hyacinth in a pot, I placed it on my working desk, where I could observe and enjoy its growth. I watered it every day as the lady in the flower shop suggested. The first four, five days nothing happened. Nothing. I watered it, took pictures to capture any progress and then I’d post those photos on the Instagram. No progress whatsoever, I almost quit on it. On the sixth day, I noticed that some of the buds started to move. Just to move, not open yet. And then a week later, I woke up early and saw that 1/3 of the buds were moving, they started to turn into beautiful pink petals.

Do you see here (L photo) some buds started to move?

In 6/7 days, the hyacinth fully blossomed (R photo) spreading its intoxicating perfume I love in the spring.

I’ve been thinking about this and came up with two morals of the story. The first moral is that all good things don’t happen over night. To the external world it may look like they happened over night, so-called “overnight success”; but they didn’t. It takes time and everyday care (watering) to move the buds and open those petals. The same is in life and work. Second moral of the story, the fact that something was not moving for 6/7 days or 6/7 weeks or years doesn’t mean it is stale and passive and is not growing. Maybe that growth is not visible to our eyes. And the most important thing, when we want to give up on something (idea/project/personal goal) – that is the moment we have to be patient and keep going because the next day may be the day of the breakthrough/great brainstorm/visible progress.

Dr Danica Radovanović is a Digital Equality Advisor at the Basic Internet Foundation, a social media researcher and international consultant. Danica is a former University of Oxford (Oxford Internet Institute) and JFDP/Fulbright Scholar in Information, Communication and the Social Sciences. Known as web activist and consultant in social web, digital media, e-literacy/learning, Danica pioneered...more>>